More about that therapy that focused on your dreams, please? It seems that most of the dreams I have sound like nightmares to other people. Most of the time they don't bother me -- in the moment or after-the-fact -- I just tell people I have "horror-movie dreams." But sometimes they do. A few weeks ago I had a dream about a haunted house I was going to. I never got there, but there were multiple interactions in the journey to the haunted house. They all ended up in killings. "Lots of murder in that dream," I told one or two people when I talked to them about it. Lots of murder. That one has stuck with me. It stuck with me that week and I still consider it (clearly) at least once or twice a week now. I wouldn't like another dream like that one anytime soon if I can help it.
Yeah, sure! So I was in a Bad Place, while I was living over in Budapest. One of my friends said he had a great therapist I could talk to if I wanted to... and I figured I'd try it out. I had no idea what to expect, never been to a therapist, etc. She started off the conversation with me trying to figure out where the access point was to whatever was bothering/upsetting me, and she asked about my dreams. I told her about this insane one I had just had, where I was in a boat in a stream, passing a series of horrible statues showing progressively worse and worse tortures. The river was shallow and slow and calm, flowing beautifully through the English countryside... and here were these horrific depictions of exotic tortures. One that stuck out to me was pulling a hangnail so it went all the way up the inside of the arm, through the armpit, and down the back.... so yeah... really viscerally disturbing. (I had a problem with hangnails at the time.) The dream didn't horrify me, or anything. I didn't even think of it as a nightmare. When I finished telling her about it, she was smiling broadly... almost laughing.... "Well! That doesn't take much to interpret, does it?" Me: "Huh?" She: "Well, what is happening is that there is something you are in denial about, or something you need to do and are purposefully ignoring it. So your subconscious is trying to jar your conscious mind into facing up to the Hard Thing that you need to do. Each sculpture is designed by your subconscious to shock you... and when it doesn't work, the subconscious comes up with a more horrific one, and so on, until you finally address the Hard Thing you are in denial about." The idea of my subconscious communicating via dreams to my stubborn conscious mind was a revelation to me! She and I met 3 times, I think, and then I had the tools to diagnose these things on my own, and do the internal work I needed to do to address whatever the issue was. (Much of my life up to that point was "performative". I did the things other people thought I should be doing, or things they thought I would like, and never really realized that I was able to make those assessments and decisions for myself. This dream therapy really helped me come to terms with that and get my mind focused on ME and what I wanted - which I had not realized was a thing I could think, prior to that.) It was amazing. More about that therapy that focused on your dreams, please?